Possible to install TrueNAS on QNAP TS-464eU hardware?

[DominikHoffmann]

The QNAP TS-464eU has an attractively small footprint and is only 1U in height. It has four 3.5-in bays and two sockets for M.2 NVMe drives.

I am wondering, whether it would be possible to populate the two sockets with 256 GB drives, configure them as a mirror, and use that as the boot pool. Then, I would imagine, I can do anything I want with the 3.5-in bays.

I haven’t worked with a QNAP NAS and therefore do not really understand it. The sales chat agent told me that the QNAP OS is installed on all drives. Not sure, whether he meant that it is a distributed OS, or what. It did not quite make sense.

[DominikHoffmann]

The topic I turned a boat anchor (QNAP TS-451) into a TrueNas server (now bare-metal install) refers to the install of TrueNAS on much older QNAP hardware. Not sure, what of that applies to the TS-464eU. There are references to (very small) QNAP DOMs in that thread, but I don’t know, whether the TS-464eU has one of those, or even whether it is 16 GB or larger.

[SmallBarky]

QNAP website lists Flash Memory 4GB (Dual boot OS protection) . Guessing OS is mirrored and that is what chat agent meant.

[HoneyBadger]

While it does list a pair of NVMe slots, I’m not sure if the QNAP UEFI/BIOS will allow you to boot directly from them. Other community users with similar systems that don’t allow native NVMe boot have sometimes used a Linux-based boot manager on a USB stick that basically loads first, and then jumps to the internal NVMe device.

[DominikHoffmann]

If somebody else on here knows, I would like to know, definitively, whether a QNAP NAS can boot from NMVe drive. without such a crutch.

[DominikHoffmann]

I just signed up for a user ID on the QNAP NAS Forum, where I posted this:

Can a TS-464eU be set up to boot from an internal NVMe SSD?

If not, how large is the internal flash storage on that model?

Does it have any internal SATA ports (other than the ones wired to the four 3.5-in bays), where I could attach a boot drive?

I’ll post my findings here, as soon as I learn anything.

[DominikHoffmann]

Based on my thread at the QNAP forum, I am going to try to install TrueNAS on QNAP NAS hardware, specifically on two internal 512 GB NVMe drives.

[HoneyBadger]

Let us know how you fare! The QNAP spec sheet states that you have a second SODIMM slot free with a max of 2x8GB so that might be a prudent upgrade especially if you plan to add some Apps.

[block_read]

Hi everyone,

I recently switched from my old Synology NAS, where 10 MB/sec with encryption was just unbearable, to a QNAP TS-464eU running TrueNAS. I installed 3x Samsung Red 8 TB drives in RAID-5 for 12 TB of usable space and added 32 GB RAM (Samsung M471A2K43DB1, 2x16 GB), which TrueNAS recognized without issues.

The installation wasn’t smooth at first: Rufus gave me GRUB errors when creating the boot stick, so I switched to balenaEtcher, and that worked perfectly. After installation, I noticed the login was truenas_admin instead of admin, as seen in many tutorials.

One thing that did throw me off: I saw some error messages on the first boot. I’m ignoring them for now, but we’ll see if they become a problem. So far, everything seems stable, and I’m excited to see how this setup performs.

[HoneyBadger]

Thanks for the report @block_read - the account change to truenas_admin in 24.10 is to avoid potential conflicts when joining directory services that might already be using admin internally.

You might see some transparent grub errors during the initial boot in the vein of compression method unsupported but if you’re concerned you can always grab the full contents of dmesg and post it inside of code blocks.

Welcome and thanks again for the installation report!

[DominikHoffmann]

That is just fantastic. I have not yet had the opportunity to try this, because I still have to get one of my clients to follow my recommendation to invest in a local backup of their Dropbox or OneDrive cloud storage infrastructure (evidently, they do not see the risk of leaving the burden of providing redundancy to the cloud storage provider).

Thanks very much for that report! This gives me great confidence in proposing this hardware solution to my clients.

You did not mention what the target volume housing the TrueNAS OS was. Was it an internal M.2 NVMe SSD or something else?

[DominikHoffmann]

Thanks, @HoneyBadger! That is very helpful, as well. Hopefully, soon I will be able to embark on just that type of installation. When I do, I will of course report back.

[block_read]

Thank you for the warm welcome!
I actually ran into the GRUB issue during the initial boot. I got the following error message:

Welcome to GRUB!
error: unknown filesystem.
grub rescue>

However, I didn’t spend much time fiddling with the RUFUS settings and instead instantly switched to Etcher, which worked flawlessly on the first try.

@DominikHoffmann I spent quite a bit of time thinking about this as well, but ultimately, I came to the conclusion that taking responsibility for my own data is the only reasonable solution, even if the data isn’t strictly private. Unfortunately, many people prefer not to swallow that bitter pill of self-responsibility.

I’ve been running the QNAP TS-464eU for just a day now, and so far, I’m very satisfied. However, I did encounter a small issue when creating the storage pool:

TrueNAS gave me a warning that two disks had identical serial numbers. It took me a moment to find where to view the serials (under Disks). I’d suggest perhaps moving the Disks section to the main menu and including the specific disk names directly in the warning message. I suspect the issue involved the 2 MiB mmcblk0boot0 and mmcblk0boot1, which are likely built into the TS-464eU and have empty serials.

Setting up ACLs for the SMB shares was a bit challenging as well. I chose the “generic” dataset preset, which may have added a bit of manual work. Once you understand the POSIX rules, it’s manageable, but the error messages could be more precise. For instance, if a rule with or without the default flag is missing, it would be helpful if the error message pointed that out more clearly to improve the user experience.

The TrueNAS OS itself runs on a Samsung 990 Pro 1 TB SSD. I briefly considered buying two SSDs for caching, but I’m fairly conservative when it comes to data integrity. From what I’ve read, the TS-464eU can already deliver around 300 MB/sec, which is plenty for my use case, as there’s rarely more than one computer accessing the data intensively at the same time. I’m also running a 2.5 Gbit switch without link aggregation – keep it simple for home usage. The 1 TB capacity is clearly overkill for this application, but it’s what I had on hand.

The leap from Synology to the QNAP TS-464eU running TrueNAS has been nothing short of fantastic so far! I’m very impressed with both the hardware and TrueNAS itself.

Is there any way to have Scrub and SMART tasks rescheduled if the NAS happens to be off at the scheduled time? I plan to run my NAS on-demand only, to minimize noise and power consumption.

I’m also curious to see how well my APC UPS integrates with TrueNAS. That’s next on my list to configure, and I’ll report back once I have that set up.

[DominikHoffmann]

@block_read

The TrueNAS OS itself runs on a Samsung 990 Pro 1 TB SSD. I briefly considered buying two SSDs for caching, but I’m fairly conservative when it comes to data integrity. From what I’ve read, the TS-464eU can already deliver around 300 MB/sec, which is plenty for my use case, as there’s rarely more than one computer accessing the data intensively at the same time. I’m also running a 2.5 Gbit switch without link aggregation – keep it simple for home usage. The 1 TB capacity is clearly overkill for this application, but it’s what I had on hand.

I am not 100% clear on whether your SSD is in one of the two M.2 slots on the QNAP motherboard. Is it?

The reason I am so persistent in asking is that it has not been entirely clear to me, what hardware the QNAP native software runs on. I think it’s those mmcblk0boot0 and mmcblk0boot1 you mention. If I look at a picture of the mother board, where would I find them? If I am correct about that, it also sounds like they don’t have the storage capacity to run TrueNAS.

[DominikHoffmann]

@block_read

[I] added 32 GB RAM (Samsung M471A2K43DB1, 2x16 GB), which TrueNAS recognized without issues.

The QNAP specification calls for a max of 16 GB of RAM. I am glad that you have answered another question I would never get a correct answer out of the QNAP sales agents on: Can the RAM sockets be populated with two 16-GB modules, producing usable 32 GB. I was going to venture trying myself.

[HoneyBadger]

@block_read

TrueNAS gave me a warning that two disks had identical serial numbers. It took me a moment to find where to view the serials (under Disks). I’d suggest perhaps moving the Disks section to the main menu and including the specific disk names directly in the warning message. I suspect the issue involved the 2 MiB mmcblk0boot0 and mmcblk0boot1, which are likely built into the TS-464eU and have empty serials.

Last time I simulated this, it actually did tell me the devices if I started the pool creation (under the checkbox) and warned me about potential issues if I used those ones specifically. I’ll have to try again and make sure that’s still the case.

But yes, you nailed it in one - it’s the duplicate sub-devices on the mmcblk0 device. That can be safely ignored; just don’t make a pool out of 'em

[block_read]

You’re absolutely right to ask for clarification! Yes, my M.2 SSD is installed in slot one of the two M.2 NVMe slots on the QNAP TS-464eU motherboard. TrueNAS runs entirely off of this SSD.

I’m attaching a photo of the motherboard before inserting the SSD, so you can get a clear view of the layout.

Interestingly, TrueNAS seems to use the SSD primarily to store FreeNAS (the OS) and the configuration files. In hindsight, maybe a 10 Euro USB flash drive would have been a better choice for this purpose – given that the SSD capacity is overkill for such light usage.

I’m also attaching a screenshot of the disks. In addition to the two small boot devices (mmcblk0boot0 and mmcblk0boot1), you can see another device: mmcblk0 with a capacity of 4 GiB. This is likely where the QNAP OS resides. For now, I’ve left this partition untouched for warranty and fallback purposes.

That said, the idea of using the onboard eMMC storage for hosting TrueNAS itself and dedicating the two M.2 NVMe SSDs purely for caching is quite attractive. It would keep the responsibilities cleanly separated, with everything self-contained on the board, and the system would be blazing fast.

As you pointed out, the storage devices provided by the TS-464eU are most likely “on chip” components, integrated directly onto the board.

[HoneyBadger]

@block_read

In hindsight, maybe a 10 Euro USB flash drive would have been a better choice for this purpose – given that the SSD capacity is overkill for such light usage.

Cheap flash drives - and possibly even the eMMC on-board - tend to not perform well as TrueNAS boot devices, because they have lower endurance and sustained performance. Often they don’t support any manner of TRIM or wear-leveling, and with the increased level of logging and auditing reports available in newer releases of TrueNAS, they tend to be a bad choice for longevity.

However, a USB-to-SATA device with a decent chip (with appropriate cooling and reliability) can work extremely well. They’re not as unobtrusive as a USB stick, but they can often be Velcro’ed or tucked elsewhere within the chassis.

But yes - the boot-pool device is reserved for the TrueNAS OS only. We don’t currently support partitioning/splitting it.

[DominikHoffmann]

@block_read

I’m also attaching a screenshot of the disks. In addition to the two small boot devices (mmcblk0boot0 and mmcblk0boot1), you can see another device: mmcblk0 with a capacity of 4 GiB. This is likely where the QNAP OS resides. For now, I’ve left this partition untouched for warranty and fallback purposes.

(…)

That said, the idea of using the onboard eMMC storage for hosting TrueNAS itself and dedicating the two M.2 NVMe SSDs purely for caching is quite attractive. It would keep the responsibilities cleanly separated, with everything self-contained on the board, and the system would be blazing fast.

This is from QNAP’s marketing materials:

Can you tell from that, where the eMMC is located?